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Tuesday, 24 January 2012

It's been a while, rounding up the end of the semester and now exams etc.

Finally got round to starting on isolating Grannies side, so she is separated from all the dust and mess! (and hopefully she'll stop complaining she's cold.)

Knocked all the render off in an attempt to see how much space there would be, and where the ceiling boards end.

Knocked a hole through the supposedly concrete floor, which was 5mm thick in some places, and 5cm thick in other, all just rested on soil. Enormous stench of damp when digging it out.
Dug down to about 40 or 50cm and cleaned up next to the existing foundation (You can see it on the left)

Made some shuttering and poored a big lump of concrete between the two foundations, to give the new door something to rest on.

Waited for that to dry for a bit, then layed some Bitumen stuff as a damp proof courseand build up the base the door will sit on, and left that to dry.

Knocked a hole in the wall for the lintel to sit in after measuring it out.

This is the right side of the lintel, not much supporting it but this supports the roof of the "lounge".. its about 20cm of random stuff (Roof tiles, bits of brick, mortar) glued to 1 single course of brick.. I was told it was shuttered concrete, which is most definitely is not.

Other end of lintel sitting neatly inside the wall.

Same day, building up one side of bricks, all pre-cut to size with protrusions going inside the door frame so its "wedged" in place.

Too cold to do much, glue didn't set properly.. bit of a nightmare, gave up pretty fast.

And end of today, both sides built up, mixed the glue with hot water, got a little heater to heat up the wall i was working on. Because the walls were so uneven I had to modify a lot of the little blocks and fill up huge gaps. Anyhow, some mortar and 1 hour later Its all pointed up and all the gaps are closed.

Poored very liquid concrete between the edge of the frame and the blocks that slide inside the edge to hold it all together and "fix" it in place.

Same view, other side. Still need to point the top left but I need to take some more render off the wall first but that will create dust so granny wouldn't be happy (it was getting late).

Need to cut blocks to go ontop of the frame, between the lintel and the frame, and seat the lintel itself.

Then I need to get a new consumer unit for grannies side of the house and recess it into the blockwork which will go above the door, and create channels for the wiring to run through to the consumer unit.

Then eventually, a door might end up in there!

ceiling is next on the "to do" list for the hallway, and then eventually some time the floor, but we still need to go talk to a possible supplier for underfloor heating for system boards or staples and general supplies.